The aim of the study is to analyze the careers of women gymnastics directors about the turn of the century in 1900. This is done by means of a collective biographical study of the women's course at the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics in Stockholm from 1891 to 1893. The study is based above all on unique correspondence between the members of the course, namely a correspondence book circulated among them between 1893 and 1943. This book contained a total of almost 500 letters comprising thousands of handwritten pages with detailed accounts of their professional career and family, as well as life's positive and negative sides. The study shows that their opportunities of making a career in Sweden and abroad in the occupation they had received training in were good. There are several reasons for this success. Swedish gymnastics treatment methods were the height of fashion round about the turn of the century in 1900 and there was great demand for their services. They remained faithful to their choice of occupation, even if their career took a back seat for half of them when they married: family life and a professional career could not be combined for them.

This thesis examines the media construction of five Swedish sports heroes, active from the 1920’s to the beginning of the 2000’s. The analyses are based on the assumption that sports heroes are social products that reflect the dominating ideals and values of a society or culture, and that the media plays an important role in this process. Firstly, the media provide the attention necessary for successful athletes to become publically known and, secondly, they create the stories in which some athletes are represented as heroes while others are represented as villains. The use of narrative theory in this thesis builds on the idea that a story is not merely a way of presenting information, but a way of creating meaning. A person becomes a hero when he or she is described as a hero in a heroic tale. To analyze the media construction of sports heroes is thus to analyze the media stories of them as heroes.

In order to examine and compare the construction of sports heroes in the media, articles from daily press and magazines as well as broadcasts in radio and television have been analyzed. The results show that although each of the five heroes were valued and represented according to ideals and values specific of his or her time, there are similarities in the media representation of them that suggest that there is some degree of stability in the narrative of the Swedish sports hero over time. In many ways, the story of the Swedish sports hero is still intact since the 1920’s. However, this story is an ideal story and the process of constructing athletes as heroes has proved to be filled with compromise and contradictions. It can be argued that the media is more concerned with fitting the athletes into an already existing narrative of the Swedish sports hero than with representing them as individuals.

Seen in a wider historical context, sports heroes represent an example of how national identity is constructed in the media. National identity is, as many theorists have shown, a dynamic and relational process. What is considered typically Swedish thus changes over time and in different contexts. In this process the social status of sports heroes helps to stabilize as well as legitimize dominating ideas of Swedish national identity.

Recruiting immigrant students to the initial PE teacher education at the Swedish School of Sort and Health Sciences

Sweden is in many ways a multicultural society. Off all children living in Sweden around 20 % are themselves born or have parents who are born in another country. These children has also made an impact on Swedish sports. Today, research show that boys from immigrant families are as much a part of organized sports as children born in Sweden, while girls from immigrant families are less active in organized sports.

Whereas organized sports in general show a similar pattern as society as a whole when it comes to children born in other countries, with the exception for girls, initial education for physical education (PE) does not. Studies reveals that the typical student in initial teacher education for PE is born in Sweden, grew up in the countryside and comes from families with limited tradition of higher education. In The Swedish School of sport and health sciences (GIH), only 9 % of the students in the PE teacher education program where immigrants or came from immigrant families. In this regard, the initial PE teacher education in Sweden faces a huge challenge.

In our presentation we will discuss some of the strategies that GIH has adopted to recruit students with other backgrounds than the typical. We will also address some of the challenges that comes with this regarding different cultural backgrounds and basic knowledge of the Swedish sporting culture.

Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were used to examine the influence of riding on the identity construction of people with disabilities. The 15 participants, three men and 12 women, were between 15 and 65 years old and have various physical disabilities. The data analysis derives from identity theory, a social–psychological theory that understands identity as an interaction between the individual and society. The findings show that: the informants either acquire a new identity as a rider or they resume with the rider identity they had before their illness or accident; riding offers a link to their previous lives; and riding helps to focus on what the informants can do, and not, as this group is often viewed by society, on what they cannot do. The findings thus show that riding can influence the identity construction of people with disabilities.

This paper examined a form of 19th century globally spread physiotherapy known as Swedish medical gymnastics. The goal of the research was to determine the aim of medical gymnastics, its elements and its performance style. The study also investigated why medical gymnastics had such a large global impact? Applying a qualitative text analysis, the results showed that medical gymnastics, through individually tailored movements, aimed to restore health, which for various reasons had declined. Furthermore, the treatment made particular use of passive movements carried out by someone other than the patient. Even massage was included. However, there were also active movements, under the supervision of or supported by a gymnast. As for the global spread, two factors contributed to this: first, its scientific and philosophical foundations were typical of the period; and second, recent graduates of the Royal Central Gymnastics Institute in Stockholm went abroad to promote Ling gymnastics, the type of gymnastics to which medical gymnastics belonged. Medical gymnastics treatment became an important source of income for both the graduates and the Royal Central Gymnastics Institute. This led, ultimately, to many people coming into contact with this form of gymnastics. Yet another reason was its rootedness, both in the past and in the future, where physical exercise remains of major importance for maintaining or regaining health.

The problem forming the basis of this study is why Ling gymnastics, a product of the early 19th Century, was constantly practised in Swedish state-run schools during the 1950s despite the fact that, from the beginning of the 20th Century, it had been questioned by scientists and faced stiff competition from sport. The thesis approaches the question in relation to the state and the body. Ling gymnastics was conducted in the state school system and the target was the body. The establishment of elementary schools, in 1842, is seen as the starting-point for the building of a modern Swedish bureaucratic educational state incorporating the whole country. Mass education helped to integrate all the citizens into the state and offered an opportunity to eliminate the differences and conflicts that belonged to the old society. However, it was also possible to establish new ones. Up until 1962, there existed in Swedish compulsory schooling namely two parallel school systems, the elementary school and the secondary school, which targeted different categories of pupils.

The aim of the thesis is to examine the role of physical education when it came to raising citizens in the democratic welfare state established and expanded during the research period, 1919 until 1962, when the socially differentiated school system was replaced by nine years of comprehensive schooling. The main question is, from a class- and gender perspective, what type of citizens were to be raised by the subject “gymnastics with games and sport” (as it was known during that period), both in terms of physique and character, and with which subject-matter was this going to happen – gymnastics or sport?

The study has shown that the reason why Ling gymnastics lasted so long was that it was needed until the introduction of comprehensive schools. The establishment of the democratic welfare state required a new population. However, since it was not intended, at that time, for the population to be uniform, tools were needed, with whose help it was possible to mould citizens with both common and different features. One tool was physical education that comprised two forms of physical training, Ling gymnastics and sport, which, from the educational point of view and for sorting purposes, possessed various qualities. Thus, when comprehensive schools were introduced, interest in Ling gymnastics waned, partially because the subject had become more physiological, but also because the subject’s task was modified. When the bodies Ling gymnastics had helped to develop were no longer a target and a partially new form of character education was desired, Ling gymnastics had served its purpose.

On the other hand, special women’s gymnastics, which was launched at the beginning of the 20th Century, had not had its day. This gymnastics was still needed to raise girls into women, however, in a rhythmical and physiological form. Even the gymnastics the boys were to have contained characteristics from the earlier boys’ gymnastics in the form of apparatus work and weight training. The difference was that it had become more powerful training and had been supplemented by circuit training and fitness testing. However, Ling gymnastics, in the shape of independent, constructed movements carried out to instructions in accordance with planned daily exercises, had disappeared.

Introduction. The purpose of this article is first to provide a picture of disability sport in general and second to increase knowledge of sport for women with disabilities.

Material and methods. The study method is a qualitative text analysis of organised Swedish disability sport and of media reporting of the Paralympics. The study begins in 1969, the year when the Swedish Sports Organization for the Disabled (SHIF) was formed, and continues until the Summer Paralympics in 2012. The theory is based on three conceptual pairs: integration and inclusion, the medical and social models, and the traditional and progressive models of media coverage.

Results. The results show that SHIF strove principally not for inclusion but for integration. Further, women in SHIF led a hidden existence, except for the period between the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, when initiatives were taken to improve their position. In other respects, this was a non-issue. Moreover, the medical model was dominant, and sport was viewed above all as rehabilitating. Finally, mainstream media reporting was traditional, namely Paralympic participants were portrayed first and foremost as people with disabilities and secondarily as sports practitioners.

Conclusion. Swedish disability sport during this period was not included in the sports movement in general and integration work was, for the SHIF board, superordinate to the gender aspect.

This article examines the media representation of Swedish elite sport from the end of the 1960s until the present day in terms of objectification, sexualization and pornification. During this period, Sweden became one of the world's most gender-equal countries. Applying a critical qualitative textual analysis, the article shows that the media discourse on gender and sport is, however, not equal. Even if the discourse over time has become less condescending and less explicitly sexist, there are still more or less subtle allusions to women as a sex. From the latter half of the 1990s onwards, it is possible to talk of a pornification of sport which is strongly linked to market adjustment and commercialization. Since pornification affects women to a greater extent, the media image of Swedish elite sport becomes a bastion for the reproduction of inequality.

During the twentieth century, large, non-competitive Gymnastics festivals were held in Europe. An early festival of this kind was the 1939 Lingiad, which was held in Stockholm and based on the principles of Ling gymnastics. A later variation that is still going today is the World Gymnaestrada, which is based on the principle of 'Gymnastics for All'. The aim of this study is to highlight the concept Gymnastics for All and, above all, to examine whether it contains any elements of Ling gymnastics. Three pairs of opposing concepts, general–elite, collectivism–individualism, and modesty–ambition, have been used for this task. The study is based on twenty group interviews and eighty-seven observations. The results show that one similarity between the two forms of gymnastics is their non-competitiveness, and another is the view of collectivism and general, namely that gymnastics should be performed together and the idea behind both gives everyone an opportunity to participate. The major difference between the two can be linked to the increased individualization of society during this period. This is shown, for instance, by the fact that many of the participants, young people under the age of twenty-five, despite their participation in the Gymnaestrada hold individual competitions in higher esteem than group display.

This thesis focuses on the physical education in the Swedish compulsory school-system during the period of 1962-2002. The background for the study is an ongoing debate concerning the deteriorating physical health among the Swedish adolescents, a development commonly explained by the decreased amount of physical education provided by the compulsory school-system.

The thesis is divided into three empirical parts. The aim of the first part is to compare the physical education on the normative level, as comprehended from the national curriculum, with the practical level, that is the contents of the subject according to the teachers themselves during the period. The aim of the second part is to analyse similarities and differences on the normative and practical level and try to explain them. The thesis also contains a third part, an international study where the Swedish results are compared with the physical education in Germany, England, Denmark, the USSR and the USA during the same period.

The result of the comparison shows similarities and differences. The most important similarities concerns the amount of time allocated to the subject and the aims with the education. The normative level exerts a great influence over the practical level regarding the amount of allocated time. Reductions on the normative level have corresponded with changes on the practical level. Regarding the aims of the physical education there seem to exist a mutual consent on the normative and practical level. On both levels the subject has been motivated by the health benefits gained by physical activity. Aesthetic and result-orientated aims were not given any major concern. The greatest difference is that recreational aims are given more concern on practical level than on normative. However, when studying the activities that were recommended on the normative level in comparison to what actually took place, great differences are revealed. While the curriculum recommended a broad range of activities, from different sports to theoretical education, the teachers focused on a narrow range of activities, mainly ball sports, gymnastics and track and field.

This results in another question. How could it be that the normative and practical level shows such so great similarities concerning the aims of the subject when the activities that were preferred differed so substantially? In the second part of the study, this question is in focus. The following analysis shows that the normative level in all respects adjusted itself to changes in the society during the second half of the 20th century. The practical level on the other hand did not exhibit any such adjustments. Rather, local factors, as the availability of sports facilities, the direction and intensity of the local sports movement, and the teachers and students own experience of sports proved to be important factors. The conclusion thus is, that while the normative level, the national curriculum, was influenced by changes in society, the practical level, that is the education provided by the physical education-teachers, was influenced by the facilities available and experiences of the participants in the physical education. This also explains the similarities and differences shown in the first part of the study.

The result of the third part, the international comparison, shows that the Swedish situation was not unique. In general the results corresponds well with existing research on physical education in Denmark and Germany. These nations have several things in common with Sweden, most importantly the organisation of the national sports movement and a historical gymnastic legacy. This argument is also strengthened by the fact that the other nations studied, England, the USA and the USSR, differed substantially from Sweden concerning the subject of physical education. Neither of these nations has shared the gymnastic legacy nor are the sports movements organized in the same manner as the formerly mentioned nations.

Thus, the conclusion of the thesis is that while the curriculum seemed to adjust itself after the changes in society during the second half of the 20th century, the physical education teachers adjusted the education in accordance with their own experience of sport, with the popular local sports and with the availability of facilities in close proximity of the school. As a consequence, major differences regarding the contents of the physical education developed between the normative and the practical level while the aims of the education showed great similarities on both levels.

The purpose of the study is to analyse the demonstration sports (baseball, glima and Gotlandic sport) into the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Who took the initiative for the demonstration sports? The IOC or the Swedish Organising Committee? How were the demonstration sports received by the public and the press, and what was their legacy? The study is based mainly on primary sources from the 1912 Stockholm Olympics’ archive. The 1912 Stockholm Olympics has been well explored, mainly by Swedes and internationals, and this gives a good picture of the 1912 Stockholm Olympics from different perspectives. On the other hand, research into the demonstration sports in the Olympic Games is clearly limited and there is thus a great need for further studies. This current study covers just a small part of this need. The results show that in 1912 there was no considered strategy on the part of either the IOC or the Swedish Organising Committee concerning the demonstration sports. The initiative for the demonstration sports came from individual representatives of each type of sport, and the Swedish organisers were positive towards three of those proposed: baseball, glima and Gotlandic sport. The Swedish organisers had control over which demonstration sports would be included in the programme. This meant that the choice of demonstration sports lay beyond the control of the 1912 IOC, but this would change in the 1900s. During the games they were given limited attention at most, both publicly and in the press. The demonstration sports were removed from the Olympic programme before the 1992 Olympic Games.